


our hole in the middle of our house

by iwishii



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Falling In Love, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, they're all insane and diego guesses this is just his life now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-14 02:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18043532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwishii/pseuds/iwishii
Summary: A year after splitting with Eudora, Diego finally moves out from the boiler room of his boxing club and into a cheap apartment near the station. What he doesn't expect is that when he gets there his new neighbours are varying degrees of insane, and that there's a hole the size of a soccer ball gaping between his living room and number 4's.Terrific.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So I'd been thinking about writing this for a while, and people on both tumblr and the kliego discord server have convinced me to get it written out and posted. Enjoy this chaos.
> 
> It's devoted entirely to all the sinners in the kliego discord.

"I'm not homeless"  
  
He's not, he knows he's not. He has a place to stay with running water and a bed. Nothing about that spelled homeless to him.  
  
Eudora gives him a sharp look. "Living underneath your boxing club does not count as an apartment. Your bathroom is the changing rooms and your rent is floor mopping. You can't live in the boiler room forever, Diego"  
  
Before he had say a word to defend his case she slaps a pamphlet down on his desk and stabs it with her finger for good measure. With a pointed glare Eudora seems to have decided the discussion is over and walks away to her own desk, and he tries not to watch her ass as she goes.  
  
Sitting on his desk in front of him is a run down on a cheap apartment near the station, but notably the other side to where he used to live with Eudora, where she herself still lived. He scowls at it.  
  
He's not homeless, and he doesn't need a new place.  


* * *

  
So a month later Diego dumps down the last box of his abysmally small collection of belongings onto the living room floor of his new apartment.

It's a box to say the least, not much bigger than the boiler room: living room led straight into the kitchen, with half a breakfast table dividing them, and then three more doors. One to the bedroom, one to the bathroom and one storage room barely big enough for the vacuum crammed in there from the previous tenant.  
  
At least the decor isn't too bad. Diego reasons. Default magnolia walls and a carpet that might have once been cream with a runway of fibre loss worn down from how many times over the years since the carpet was laid. The kitchen tiles aren't even some disgusting pattern: just red and the stove has been recently cleaned.  
  
If it weren't for the semi-duct taped up hole in the wall and the gathered pile of dry wall dust on the ground beneath it Diego might have actually thought this place was cosy. The landlord had promised that it would be filled in by the time Diego got the keys. _Liar_.  
  
"Well, at least I can't see through it" He reiterates to himself as he dips down to check again. The cop finds himself doing a double take. "Shit, really?"  
  
In the time since viewing three weeks ago and moving in that morning, what little dry wall had held on desperately with the aid of grey tape had crumbled away. Dark eyes peered through the two inch jagged hole poking through between two apartments.  
  
The apartment next door is dim, curtains drawn and no sign of life inside, which isn't a bad thing in of itself if not for the fact Diego shouldn't be able to tell that at all.  
  
"There's a fucking hole in my wall"  
  
He jumps when a thumbs up suddenly appears in his keyhole line of vision. The beads around the stranger's wrist jingle with the sharp movement, and the nail is painted black.  
  
"Welcome to the neighbourhood, my friend" A voice slurs from the other side, sounding low and drunk.  
  
The hand drops away, flopping like strings cut, and Diego waits with a baited breath as he tries to figure if that was his imagination or not. Whether this bizarre turn of events was real or if the perp really had hit him that hard on the head the day before.  
  
Like spider's legs, two fingers creep through the hole, dislodging yet more dry wall, and Diego hears huffing as the person on the other side moments before a green eye with pupil blown stares back through at him. The kohl lined edges crinkle, telling Diego that the stranger is grinning at him.  
  
"Well hello there" A purr comes muffled through the space between. It dissolves into a giddy chuckle. "Peek-a-boo-hoo to you"  
  
It's too dark on the other side and the person is too close for Diego to tell anything except that the man is pale and high. Standing further from his side of the hole, Diego figures the man has a better view of him, because call him crazy he feels like he's being checked out by his wall: the eye looks him up and down, and back again, and what little he can see of the man's eyebrow partly hidden by tape, wiggles appreciatively.  
  
"So..." Diego drawls, his back is starting to hurt from where he's leaning down some. "This is weird"  
  
The eye disappears into the black when the stranger throws their head back to guffaw. Diego starts again for the second time when his new neighbour misjudges the rebound and smacks his forehead against the wall to peer through at Diego once more.  
  
"Ow" The stranger snorts. "So, okay, there's the thing buddy. I am so high. So, so gloriously high right now, and also so very tired; so the welcome party and casserole will have to wait until I've had my eight hours. Is that okay with you?"  
  
Diego opens his mouth, but the stranger rolls on.  
  
"Great, I'm glad. I'll give ya a hit up later. Well done on the this by the way" The eye disappears and fingers poke through to gesture at Diego's general being. "Very nice. Good night"  
  
It's truly a testament to how dumbfound Diego is that no words leave him when the man on the other side drops away without fully letting go of the wall, yanking out with him catastrophically large chunk of the wall, and the string of swearing on the other side invokes nothing but rapid blinking from the apartment's new resident.  
  
It's nine thirty.  
  
It's nine thirty, the hole in his wall is now big enough to shove his head through, his neighbour is a self-confessed junkie and Diego has signed a six month lease.  
  
_Fuck_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone for all your lovely comments!! AHH I love you x

Owing to having very few belongings, by midday Diego found himself at a loss of what to do with his time. With unpacking complete he dropped down on the floor and caught himself making a mental note to buy one before taking out his phone to make it a physical shopping list instead. Eudora would have been pleased to know that the man who insisted he never forgot anything he needed was bothering to make a list.  
  
Either that or she would be mad that he does it now, rather than the millions of times she asked him to during their two year relationship.  
  
_Couch. Food. Toilet paper._  
  
Diego looked up at the hole in his wall.  
  
_Poster._  
  
It's not until he's half way down the page, having micro-listed everything he could think of, that his door knocks. For a moment he debates ignoring it as he would have done back at his old place, but when the knock sounds again Diego reminds himself that regular people considered company a good cure for boredom and not an avoidable annoyance.  
  
If it's the guy from next door, I'm not answering. Diego thinks to himself, eyes flicking to the hole suspiciously. A peek through the spyview tells him otherwise however, because on the other side of the door is a man who looks like his head is far too small for his large shoulders and a woman with a bright, Hollywood smile.  
  
_Remember. You were bored ten seconds ago._  
  
Diego opened the door and blinked in surprise, taken aback both by how big the stranger is and by the fact that it wasn't the warped view of the spy view making his head look so pin-like: his shoulders were so large, his head looked ludicrously small.  
  
"Hi!" The woman greeted, her smile far less awkward than the tall white dude plastered on. Diego could have sworn the man's expression was borderline defensive, flicking to it from open curiosity seconds before. "I'm Allison, from apartment three, this is Luther, from apartment one: we're your new neighbours. We heard you were moving in today and thought we'd give you a little welcome"  
  
He nodded at them.  
  
After a painful pause Diego realised they were waiting for him to introduce himself. Ah.  
  
"Uh-um, D-D-Diego" He bit his cheek. One knuckle tapped the lopsided brass number on his door. "Apartment two I guess"  
  
The layout of the simple apartment complex was as such: four small apartments per level, one and three on the left as one walked in from the equally small foyer, and two and four on the right. Back out into the foyer and up the stairs led straight up to another four apartments, again with odd numbers on the left and even on the right, and that feature repeated another three times until there were no more levels to climb. Each level had the one door leading to the stairs, no elevators, and there were fire escape ladders outside the windows at the opposite ends on each level. His mom told him it was paranoid to take such a strict note of such things, but Diego liked to know those kinds of details. He enjoyed knowing where his nearest exists were and whether he'd be able to safely leap out the window or not in the event of... well, anything.  
  
Allison was bright, not in a chipper way, she seemed too dignified for that, but her enthusiasm for meeting Diego was far more genuine than the constipated look Luther was firing him.  
  
"We knocked to see if Klaus was up" Allison gestured to her left, down the way to the apartment opposite her own. "The guy at number four, but he must be sleeping so-"  
  
Luther gave a derisive snort, making Allison's jaw twitch like she wanted to say something. She didn't however and breezed on professionally.  
  
"We figured we wouldn't disturb him" Her nose wrinkled cutely with her smile, like a rabbit. Diego might have considered her more than just attractive if she weren't so far out of his type and Luther wasn't glaring a hole into the side of his head for even holding Allison's gaze as long as he had.  
  
Diego scratched the back of his head. "Ah no, I've already met him actually"  
  
Shock passed both their faces and Diego pursed his lips into a smirk.  
  
"There's a huge hole in our joining walls" He explained.  
  
Luther looked as though that made far more sense than Klaus introducing himself as they had, while Allison made a groaning sound half way between frustrated and sympathetic.  
  
"Really? The land lord still hasn't gotten that patched up? Say, Luther knows a bit about construction, maybe he could stop by and get something put in" She jabbed a thumb Luther's way, and Diego was having a hard time working out the dynamic there. They didn't live together yet they behaved like a couple.  
  
Luther at the very least wanted them to be one, that much was glaringly obvious. One could see it from the moon.  
  
The thought of strangers in his space, even a new space like this one, made Diego cringe and he stammered to curb the offer before Luther could even take a breath to agree. "No, no it's fine I can get it handled myself. You guys know about it?"  
  
Synchronised, they both nodded sagely. Neither ever needed to know that the most Diego had built was a precarious Jenga tower.  
  
"It's Klaus' fault-" Luther started, but slammed his jaw shut when Allison swatted his pec. "What? It was"  
  
Allison shook her head. "We don't know that, you're making assumptions. Again. God Luther, we've been over this before you can't just jump to the wildest conclusions you can think of without-"  
  
"- it's not a wild conclusion! The guy's a mess, of course he'd trash the wall. It's a wonder the landlord hasn't evicted him yet. He drove out the last tenant-"  
  
"- don't interrupt me, I hate it when you do that. Listen to me, you've really got to try and start getting along better with our neigh..."  
  
Diego closed the door and backed away.  
  
He didn't surface again until he could hear the arguing float away to what sounded like Allison's apartment, and the space outside his door was blissfully empty once more.

* * *

  
Bags weighted with groceries and a vintage style boxing poster, Diego shuffled his way from his car and up the steps into the apartment complex, nodding gratefully to a petite woman who held the door open for him before scurrying away. He regretted going shopping hungry, coming up for lunch time he had likely bought far more food than originally intended, purely driven by the growl of his stomach: a fact he was suffering for now as raced to the final door wincing at the weight of his burden.  
  
"Would you like some help?"  
  
Diego cursed loudly in Spanish, dropping the bags in his left hand to slap his palm over his heart. He span around on his heels to the source of the voice and noticed for the first time a shorter man standing by the mail lockers, one hand holding some letters and the other twisting the key to lock his mail box shut again. The guy grinned wryly at Diego.  
  
"Sorry, bad habit. I don't do it on purpose though" The man tucked his letters in his back pocket, and dipped to help Diego put his purchases back in the bags. "I assume you're the new neighbour and not some random man casing the place for a burglary?"  
  
Heart now firmly back to Earth, Diego cleared his throat. "Yeah. Diego, moved in this morning"  
  
A pleasant smile was thrown his way. "Ben, number six. Nice to meet you"  
  
"Thanks" Diego murmured when Ben threaded the bags back into his palm for him. "Nice to meet you too"  
  
He expected that to be the last of it, especially when Ben opened the door leading to Diego's level for him, but as Diego began the shuffle down to his door the newcomer cleared his throat. Chin holding up a stack of fruit, Diego paused in the middle of searching for his keys to raise his eyebrows at Ben.  
  
Ben seemed to debate something for a minute, then took a breath. "He can seem a lot, maybe even rude, but I promise he's a good guy"  
  
Diego frowned, not following. "Who? The big guy"  
  
They looked briefly across to number one and then Ben shook his head.  
  
"No I mean ugh, the man who lives at number four next to you. Klaus. He's just... misunderstood. I don't want you getting the wrong idea about him" Ben gnawed on his lip. Diego stared at him blankly, long enough that Ben's cheeks flushed and he looked embarrassed enough that Diego figured he'd rescue him.  
  
"Klaus is fine actually, not had any problems so far. Which is why I thought you meant number one over there" Diego got his door unlocked, kicking it to make it swing open. "No, n-no Klaus has been fine. Gotta wonder what you people think about him though if you're all warning me-"  
  
Ben squeaked. "He's great. There's no warnings here I'm just... I'm just... You know, never mind. You'll see"  
  
_You'll see?_   What was that suppose to mean? Diego quirked an eyebrow at Ben, but the stranger had already disappeared back into the foyer and through the glass in the door Diego could see him yank open the door leading to the stair well: no doubt heading off back to his own apartment above.  
  
"Fuck" Diego grunted to himself, shaking his head and skipping in the last distance to dump his bags down on the kitchen counter. He returned only to flick the door shut again and quickly put all thoughts of his bizarre new neighbours from his mind. After all, unless any of them did anything truly out there, there was no reason for Diego to start looking for somewhere else to live. He liked to think his tolerance was fairly high given he lived in the boiler room of a boxing ring.  
  
Several hours, two meals and countless Youtube videos watched on his phone later, and Diego looked up at the sound of someone yawning. A quick check out the window told him night had now fallen, meaning he had work tomorrow- beautiful, blissful work- and his enigmatic neighbour had only just now risen after their peculiar meet and greet that morning.  
  
"Good morning" A hand flapped lazily through the hole he'd forgotten to cover with his new poster.  
  
Diego's mouth twitched into an expression dangerously close to a smile. "Good evening" He called back.  
  
The answering laugh is light, breathy and Diego didn't know what everyone was talking about; Klaus seemed great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we have Diego meeting a few more of his new neighbours! As you can probably tell by now, everyone lives in the apartment numbers correlating to their name in the show, and Diego is Not Interested in meeting any of them really... he's a mood really.
> 
> Again, this is gifted to the people in the kliego discord, and I hope to have the next chapter out soon! Also stay tuned for another fic coming out relatively soon, it's also going to be kliego.

**Author's Note:**

> This is VERY short, because it's just the prologue, all the future chapters will be longer and more detailed. For now have this funny initial prologue, because in the next chapter Diego is going to meet more of his new neighbours and properly meet the guy on the other side.


End file.
